Apple Support Nightmare

[Two disclaimers: Yes, I realize that the title is redundant, like "Cute Kitten" and such. Second, I'm whining about being able to use shiny modern devices to buy things in a virtual store - these are first-world problems. But you're reading a blog, so they're quite possibly your problems as well.]

While working on my MacBook Pro on Fri Nov 9, a dialog popped up informing me that my Apple ID had been disabled. WTF? Immediately I began trying to figure out why that would happen. Recently I had registered as an Apple developer ... [flashback coming, feel free to skip ... part of the registration process is a long form with a lot of multiple-choice questions, a form that looks like it was designed in 1992. Maybe that was because I was using Chrome, a non-union browser. The questions were along the lines of What platforms will you be developing for? But the form had issues other than ugliness. Many questions, including the one above - four times! - were repeated, not even consecutively but sprinkled throughout the survey. If you didn't answer each instance of the repeated questions, the form was rejected. Once I finally got through the registration process, I got a note into my personal email account congratulating my wife on becoming an Apple developer. Figure that one out. I haven't bothered trying, since I was able to grab Xcode anyway.] ... so I figured that had somehow messed up my Apple ID. Or that someone had cracked it. On Monday I sent a note to Apple support explaining the situation, one they must be familiar with.

Shortly after that, my wife got a call informing us of fraudulent use of the credit card backing the Apple ID / iTunes account. Okay, now the disable made sense. Should be easy to get things operational again: Just provide a new working credit card, then back to being a good little online media shopper, right?

The auto-reply to my support note instructed me to call a support number so that I could talk to an Account Security Advisor and re-enable my Apple ID. Okay, that's fine. I had already gotten the replacement credit card and updated my iTunes account, but there's always some little switch that needs to be flipped. I called the number, and walked blithely into the gates of hell. At the other end was one of those infuriating voice-response systems. Like most of those, it only partially overlapped with what I was trying to do. As I got deeper and deeper, I grew increasingly despondent that I would never hear "To talk to an Account Security Advisor, press 1". At one point it made me look up and laboriously key in the serial number to the device I was calling about, which there was none since my problem was with an account out in the ether. I went with the number on my MBP. At no point was it possible to get to anything remotely related to account security. Finally I was informed that I needed to pay Apple support $19 if I wanted to continue. At that point I began thinking it would be worth switching to Android.

I called the number a couple more times to make sure I hadn't missed a relevant option. I had not.

Back to email. My next note was not so patient in tone. In addition to the account lock issue, I mentioned the mixup with my developer registration, and as a throw-in the classic iTunes problem where it attempts to download content (in my case, two TV shows) that you don't want, with no way to make it ever stop trying to do that. The response to that note instructed me to go to online Apple support and say that I have a "lost or forgotten Apple ID password" (which wasn't true, but whatever) so that I could set up for a call from Apple support. I filled out the form with my information, including my iPhone's number, and figured that if I could at least talk to a human I could make some headway on this whole problem of flipping the switch to turn my account back on.


No call came. Eventually I got an email saying that I had provided the wrong phone number, though that note itself listed my correct phone number. Their reply advised me to go into my online case and set up another call. It took me a few tries to do that, since it's not all that clear in the support interface how to do it from there. Once I found the right page and entered my phone number again, I got a failure response page that said simply "(scrfailure)". Cool.

After another try I was able to schedule another support call. The same thing happened - no call, then an email saying I had provided the wrong number.

I tried giving them my house phone number. No dice.

Finally I had the idea that maybe they didn't like the format I was using for my phone number: 123-456-7890. So I tried the full format: +1 (123) 456-7890, and the form rejected it. I removed the country code (+1), submitted the form, and a few minutes later my phone rang. Good news, but … WTF? Mighty Apple - leaders of the free world in the field of user-friendly tech - is incapable of parsing a ten-digit US phone number without parentheses around the area code? Let me know if you've ever typed a paren while dialing a number on your iPhone. You haven't, because it doesn't appear on the keypad. Maybe Apple support doesn't have iPhones. Maybe they are all stuck in a basement in some godforsaken bombed-out ruin of a decaying city, and all they have is rotary phones. Parentheses? Seriously? The last time Apple was at a singles bar picking up some hot nerdy chick, did it say "Give me your digits, plus all the necessary correctly placed punctuation"?

Once I got someone on the phone, it wasn't too hard to resolve the issue. They asked me three security questions (and not just the last four digits of my SSN, having learned that lesson), put me on hold, and a few minutes later my account was enabled. After several rounds of email and half a day of roadblocks and dead ends, I was able to buy dippy electronic music again.